Free The Spirit is Willing (An Ophelia Wylde Paranormal Mystery) by Max McCoy

“They are a fine company and engaged in a great civic service by mapping, town by town, all of the communities in the West in order to judge their fire risk. They contribute not only to individual security, but they provide a valuable service by encouraging communities to improve their fire battalions.”
    “Is there a point in sight?” I asked.
    “If you have a policy with the good folks at Sanborn—say you are an honest woman with a millinery store, and through no fault of your own that store burns to the ground. You will receive the amount for which you insured your place of business. Nothing could be more fair.”
    “Nothing could be more cold-blooded,” I said. “Perhaps that millinery store—and I’m going to give you the type of business here, although as a woman I’m offended that you didn’t say bank or law office—maybe that hat store was the very reason for my existence, perhaps the building had been passed down through generations of women in my family, and perhaps I could see very little point in living once separated from this font of meaning. My point here is the same as with the child, that you cannot restore the mother or the millinery store, you can only settle for farthings.”
    “That,” he said, now wagging his finger at me, “is absurd.”
    “Remove that finger from my face,” I said, “or prepare to lose it.”
    “Five thousand dollars isn’t farthings.”
    “It’s exactly two million farthings, but farthings nonetheless.”
    I grasped the offending digit and held it fast.
    “Unhand me!”
    “You infuriate me.”
    “What have I done?”
    “My family had a plantation in Memphis before the war,” I said, twisting the finger. “They were slave holders. And the salesmen for the Southern Life Assurance Company of Atlanta came round and sold my father policies on his slaves, so that he would be compensated for the loss of his property should any of them die or be killed. And every few years, he would collect on a policy—five hundred dollars, as I recall, for being deprived through death of the ownership of a human being.”
    I twisted the finger a bit more, and Hill shrank with pain.
    “And not a penny went to the widows or the orphans.”
    I released the finger.
    “That was all perfectly legal,” Hill howled.
    “You deserve a thrashing.”
    “Please,” Walter said, stepping between us.
    “She is a madwoman,” Hill said, vigorously rubbing his finger. “And yet, I find myself strangely attracted to her.” Then, to me: “Would you take supper with me at the Dodge House?”
    I slapped Clement Hill.
    “So, that means no?”
    I walked into the street. The cat was sitting on his fat haunches, watching the action through sleepy green eyes.
    “Sic him, Rutherford B.”

9
    My intent was to return to my room at the Dodge House and nap. I was weary and snappish, and an hour or two of sleep might restore my mood and my faculties.
    As I passed the Saratoga on my way to my quiet room, I noticed a group of women and children gathered at a wooden table. The women were wearing their Sunday best, even though it was Monday, and the children were leaning forward on their elbows, playing some kind of game. A girl of ten with golden curls spun a teetotum and her eyes sparkled as the wooden top-like thing wobbled and fell.
    “Five!” the children squealed, more or less in unison.
    The girl moved her token five spaces.
    “Cupid,” the girl said. “Matrimony is next.”
    I walked closer, because I knew the game. “The Checkered Game of Life” was common among Union soldiers during the war. The board had sixty-four squares, like a checkerboard, but alternating squares were labeled with all manner of pedestrian boons and calamities, from being rewarded for industry with wealth—and for intemperance with poverty. It was invented by a New York lithographer as a means of teaching moral instruction. I hadn’t thought of the game in years, not since Jonathan and I had played before his